Best Norwegian to English Translation Apps (2024)
In Norway, children begin learning English at primary school, but this does not mean that all Norwegians are confident to use English in every situation. When raising a claim with an airline while on vacation, preparing for a job interview or reading a user manual in English, a little help may be required.
The same applies if you are a Norwegian business entering or expanding into an English-speaking country. You may be looking for support with your communication and translation needs, whether it is to translate your marketing assets or your website.
Fortunately, there are translation apps that can help you. In this blog post, we will look at the best Norwegian to English translation apps, how they work, their main features and how accurate they are.
3 best Norwegian to English translation apps
Microsoft Translator
Conversions from Microsoft Translator allows users who speak different languages to have a conversation in a group in real-time.
Each person can pick their language and have the chat instantly translated into their own language. This means that you can potentially have a business meeting with 10 people from all around the world, and each person can speak in their own language and understand what everyone else is saying.
For translations from Norwegian into English, it supports different features including the translation of text, audio translation and the translation of the text from an image.
The app (available for Android and iOS) is ideal to make new friends or communicate in informal meetings, but like with all machine translation technology, there are inaccuracies in the translations, in particular when there are idiomatic expressions or slang.
iTranslate
Whether you are visiting a website from your desktop or trying to read a menu with the help of your smartphone, iTranslate can come to the rescue. It allows you to translate text, voice and images between Norwegian and English. Yes, you can even speak to your phone in Norwegian, and then press play to listen to the translation in English.
It stands out from other translation apps for its user-friendly interface and features that include a “List of Favorites” that allows you to save frequently used translations and use them again later, and its Apple App Watch, so that you have your translator at hand at all times.
Are the translations of iTranslate reliable? The short answer is yes. However, it is important to remember that every translation app has limitations. For example, when translating words that do not have a 1 to 1 translation between Norwegian and English – such as the school age groups Preschool, Pre-Kindergarten or Kindergarten – the translation tool may struggle to find the correct equivalent.
Google Translate
Google Translate is free, easy to use and supports translation from Norwegian into English and vice versa. It is probably one of the most popular translation tools on the market and works on a desktop as well as on iOS and Android.
It can translate a word, a sentence, a paragraph, an entire document or even a website. You can even use a microphone to say what you would like to translate instead of typing it, and you will get the translation straight away.
How accurate is Norwegian in Google Translate? Google Translate does a good job when translating your information without losing the overall message you want to convey. It uses neural machine translation technology and the results are constantly getting better. But the translations are not always correct. In particular, when words have multiple possible translations, Google Translate can choose the wrong translation based on the context.
Norwegian to English translation apps comparison
How accurate are translation apps?
Translation apps such as Microsoft Translator, iTranslate and Google Translate will give you the gist of what you are trying to say or understand, but they cannot make any promises that your translation will be accurate.
The tools are great to understand a website or the comments from a Facebook post written in another language. They are also helpful to learn and improve your language skills, as well as to communicate in day-to-day situations such as ordering a meal, checking into a hotel or writing a message to your Airbnb host.
However, if you are a business looking for an app to translate your website or marketing materials, translation apps may not be the best solution for you. No machine can fully understand the intention and communicative context behind a sentence, which may result in wrong translations that could damage your business’ reputation.
If you are a business professional and you don’t want any nasty surprises, human translation — perhaps combined with machine translation — is your best choice. At Ampere Translations, we help businesses find the best solution for their translation needs. Get in touch today for a chat.
